Lillian Mead

Recollections of air raids and dogfights in the sky.

Air raids and dogfights

Lillian remembers Woolwich Arsenal being bombed one Saturday tea time with a blazing factory colouring the skyline yellow. She further recalls a dog fight in the sky between a German plane and a Spitfire and another time when she was walking to school a German pilot got so low that she could see him laughing as he fired at them. A lady rushed out and got the children into her house where they hid in a cupboard under the stairs.

Another memory is of Lillian walking along with a friend and her father when they saw a rocket coming down. A man along the street said that the rocket had been about to hit his house when a gust of wind took it over the house landing on Gypsy Road the other side of the railway.

Oranges and bananas

Her final recollection is of oranges and bananas coming back into the local green grocers and it being big news with people wanting the paper that the oranges were wrapped in as toilet paper as they had previously been cutting up newspapers.